Approximately 100,000 volumes
from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library, the world’s largest
oceanography library, have been digitized and are being made publically
accessible as part of a partnership between Google, the University of
California and the UC San Diego Libraries.
In 2008, UC San Diego became the
first Southern California university to partner with Google in its efforts to
digitize the holdings of the world’s most prominent libraries. Since then,
approximately 300,000 volumes and other materials have been digitized from
UCSD’s International Relations & Pacific Studies Library, the East Asian
Language Collection and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library. The
University of California was an early partner with Google, joining the Google
Book Search Project in 2006 and agreeing to provide several million books from
UC libraries for digitization. To date, more than 2 million books from UC
libraries have been digitized.
“Partnering with
Google in this global effort will lead to much greater scholarly and public
access to the rich, diverse and, in many cases, rare, materials at the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography Library,” said Brian E. C. Schottlaender, The
Audrey Geisel University Librarian at UC San Diego. “Making this treasure trove
of materials accessible to anyone with Internet access is a tremendous boon for
scholars, students and interested members of the public.”
“I am very proud
that another vital part of the Scripps-Google relationship has come to
fruition,” said Tony Haymet, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at
UC San Diego and UCSD vice chancellor for Marine Sciences. “Scripps Professor
David Sandwell’s state-of-the-art bathymetry in ‘Ocean in Google Earth’ has
been warmly received around the world, and I am sure this initiative will be
too. The leadership of Brian Schottlaender and his staff in transforming our
UCSD libraries into 21st century relevance is outstanding.”
According to Peter
Brueggeman, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library, the
materials digitized by Google include a wealth of books and journals, as well
as numerous scientific expedition reports. The Scripps Library’s collections
cover subjects ranging from oceanography, marine biology, marine geology,
marine technology, climate science and geophysics, with extensive resources in
ecology, zoology, fisheries and seismology.
“The Scripps
Oceanography Library has been in existence for more than 100 years, so
digitizing and providing access to this extensive book and journal collection
helps to create a larger and more complete digital library of materials on
the marine environment for searching and use,
including older works dating back to the 18th century in full-text,” said
Brueggeman. “While these books and other materials have long been
available on our library shelves for individual use, Google Books’ in-depth
cross-collection searching feature is definitely a game-changer for scholarly
research. Through word and phrase searching, all books on specific topics can
be identified and reviewed by scholars for their research needs. The Scripps
Library has scientific journal runs going back to the early 1800s, and many
have never been available in an electronic format. Google’s digitization of our
journal backruns makes these older scholarly resources searchable for scholars
and other researchers.”
The digitized
materials include numerous research expedition reports documenting scientific
observations and discoveries dating back to the 1800s. These works, which laid
the foundation for modern oceanography, include a report on crustaceans (The
Stalk-eyed Crustacea, Walter Faxon, 1895) collected on a U.S. expedition to
central and South America and the Galapagos on the famous ship Albatross. The
Albatross, a ship built by the U.S. government specifically for marine
research, was a precursor to today’s U.S. oceanographic fleet of ships. Another
report (The Fishes of the Swedish South Polar Expedition, Einar Lonnberg, 1905)
documented the fishes collected on a famous Antarctic expedition, the Swedish
South-Polar Expedition of 1901-1903 led by Otto Nordenskjold. Although the
expedition was a great scientific success, resulting in the collection of many
species new to science, their ship was crushed by ice, forcing the crew to
build and live in a stone hut on an Antarctic island, subsisting on bird’s eggs
and penguins, until they were rescued by a ship from Argentina. Other digitized
works include: The Medusae, (1909) by the pioneering ocean researcher Henry
Bigelow, the founding director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; The
Echinoderm Fauna of Torres Strait: Its Composition and Origin (1921) by Harvard
zoologist Hubert Lyman Clark; and The Land and Sea Mammals of Middle America
and the West Indies by zoologist Daniel Giraud Elliot, one of the founders of
the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the American
Ornithologists’ Union.
“Digitization of
the oceanographic expedition reports and older journals from the 1700s and
1800s is very exciting,” said Lisa Levin, a biological oceanographer at Scripps
Institution of Oceanography. “Scientists in those days made some extremely
astute observations; most have been lost to the general scientific community
simply because the documents reporting them have not been accessible. Those
early observations take on greater significance as environments change and
species disappear in the anthropocene (due to climate change, pollution,
habitat degradation, overfishing and species invasions). They may hold the key
to understanding conditions and ecosystems of the past, which will help us in
coming to grips with the future.”
According to Levin,
who has utilized the Scripps Library’s expedition reports in her teaching, the
digitization of the early documents also allows students and historians to
better understand the evolution of modern ideas and understanding. “For
example, I ask my deep-sea biology students at Scripps to track an idea, theme
or taxonomic group from the start of the discipline to the present using the
historical literature.”
The Scripps
Institution of Oceanography Library, one of nine UC San Diego Libraries,
supports the research and teaching efforts of Scripps Institution of
Oceanography, the world’s preeminent center for ocean and earth science. Since
its inception in 1903, Scripps Oceanography has led the global effort to
understand the oceans, atmosphere and earth for the benefit of society and the
environment. Scripps has played a key role in defining the science of
oceanography; Scripps scientists have pioneered research in climate change,
pollution, earthquakes, and marine life and conservation.
The Google project
is helping UC San Diego and other university libraries to create digital access
to thousands of texts and scholarly materials. Consequently, this helps to
protect and preserve library collections for future generations and from
catastrophic loss such as an earthquake or fire. As part of the agreement with
Google, the University of California is receiving digital copies of all books
and other materials scanned from the UC libraries. The university’s copies are
stored in HathiTrust, a shared digital repository developed in partnership with
other major research institutions across the country.
The digitized books
from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library and other materials from
the UCSD Libraries are accessible via the Google Book Search index. The search
engine allows anyone to search the full text of books from libraries and
publishing partners. For books in the public domain, readers will be able to
view, browse and read the full texts online. For books protected by copyright,
users can access basic background (such as the book's title and the author's
name), a few lines of text related to their search and information about where
they can borrow or buy a book.
Since the Google
Book Search Project’s inception in 2004, Google has digitized more than 12
million books from libraries and publishing partners throughout the world. In
addition to the University of California, other libraries at the University of
Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University and Oxford University are
among those that have also partnered with Google. Google’s ultimate goal with
the project is to make all of the knowledge contained within the world's books
searchable and discoverable online.
The UC San Diego
Libraries, ranked among the top 25 public academic research libraries in the
nation, play an integral role in advancing and supporting the university's
research, teaching, patient care and public service missions. The nine
libraries that make up the UCSD Library system provide access to more than 7
million digital and print volumes, journals and multimedia materials to meet
the knowledge demands of scholars, students and members of the public. Each
day, more than 7,300 people stream through one of the university's nine
libraries. The Libraries' vast resources and services are accessed more than
87,500 times each day via the UCSD Libraries' website.
